In Edwards Scandal, a Chapter Winds Down

By NEIL A. LEWIS
Published: September 19, 2009

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — The story of the spectacular rise and fall of John Edwards, with its sordid can’t-look-away dimensions, is moving slowly but deliberately to its conclusion here in North Carolina.

Mr. Edwards, the one-term senator who came close to being elected vice president in 2004 and ran a credible campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008, remains largely secluded at his 100-acre estate here.

But a federal grand jury in nearby Raleigh is investigating whether any crimes were committed in connection with campaign laws in an effort to conceal his extramarital affair with a woman named Rielle Hunter. At the same time, Mr. Edwards is moving toward an abrupt reversal in his public posture; associates said in interviews that he is considering declaring that he is the father of Ms. Hunter’s 19-month-old daughter, something that he once flatly asserted in a television interview was not possible.

Friends and other associates of Mr. Edwards and his wife of 32 years, Elizabeth, say she has resisted the idea of her husband’s claiming paternity. Mrs. Edwards, who is battling cancer, “has yet to be brought around,” said one family friend, who like others spoke about the situation on the condition of anonymity, pointing to the complicated and delicate nature of the issue.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/us/politics/20edwards.html?hp=&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1253384145-8xw5njeM15DH2U7lF2ly/Q

:(

I shudder to think if how ugly that would have turned out.

Vice President Palin (for awhile anyway).

Didn't the whole thing blow up about two weeks prior to the Convention?

x(

It's the right thing to do for the child, even if painful and disruptive to the Edwards family. What a sad mess.

What's also very disappointing is the steps he took to cover up the mess he made, including allegedly asking Young if he knew someone who would falsify a DNA test.

;(

even after EE's awful diagnosis would have destroyed his career completely. He did, after all, offer as a pathetic excuse that EE was in remission. This also likely destroys his and maybe EE's time line. (EE's is very suspicious - but who knows how much he lied. I suspect that she did NOT know until much later than December 2006. In August 2008, she wrote on Daily Kos of knowing in 2006 and working past it. In her book, she places this on December 31, likely because Hunter was still prominently filming on Dec 30 - something that would not have been likely had she known earlier. The idea that Edwards had Hunter filming him on Dec 30th and he told EE on December 31 always seemed fishy to me. If he decided to tell his wife, I really do not see him having Hunter come to NC.

I suspect that she was stunned at the anger towards her after the Daily Kos article because it seemed she knew and let him run. In addition, pictures of Hunter and Edwards in December 2006 were posted. I would guess her book's time line was a way to keep her 2008 story that she knew in 2006, but to argue that she didn't know until after the announcement.

Two other things argue against that:
1) It would have been a convenient easy out for Edwards to heroically back out of the race for the sake of the family when her cancer returned.
2) It is hard to believe that Edwards told her the last day of December 2006, they worker to get past this while continuing his run, she was diagnosed with terminal cancer and a few months later the baby was conceived. This story shows John Edwards to be beyond contempt.

Mr. Edwards once calmed an anxious Ms. Hunter by promising her that after his wife died, he would marry her in a rooftop ceremony in New York with an appearance by the Dave Matthews Band.

Every bad thing I have ever said about this man is true and worse.

This man could have been our president. I would like to think that he wouldn't say something so crass to his lover about the mother of his 4 children. A woman who probably got cancer thanks to the hormone treatments she went through to become pregnant after their son died.

:-(

Of JE's own (un)doing. He can fuck off.

I wish Elizabeth and the family well.

Poor Elizabeth in that she had to endure her husband's unfaithfulness while she fights for her life.

Lucky for us that Edwards did not win the nomination, only to have the scandal surface in the middle of the campaign.

My thoughts and prayers are with Elizabeth and the children.

Booooh to John.

The whole thing is so sleazy.

x(

If she is, I hope she is reading how much we really care about her and her family.

Where it says the mistress/mother is moving to the area of the Edwards' home?

What a horrible life that would be, wondering where he is all the time.

I am so disgusted with Edwards, still.


Cher

What I didn't know is that she is currently living here in NJ.

it's just incomprehensible and almost sociopathic of John and his mistress!

i've never been so disgusted with JE as i am right now, and i used to be his supporter. :(

I wish I could wave a wand for Elizabeth and all of these children to protect them from this.

What happened has happened. I hope that this family can heal now.

for her kids during this brouhaha, as I'm sure she has already. I'm so sorry that she has to deal with losing faith in her husband, fighting cancer, and worrying about her children. I wish her the best of situations and much strength.

Just sad any way you look at it. Like you, I admire Elizabeth greatly. She's the real deal.

That simple emoticon that Beacool placed at the bottom of the post says it all.

It goes beyond the usual titillation that these kind of stories usually elicit. We know how it will all end eventually since Elizabeth's cancer is terminal. It's not just the sleazy story of another unfaithful politician, this one will have tragic consequences.

It's amazing that he actually believed he wouldn't get caught. And the enabling that goes on is incredible. I'll bet if Elizabeth was not so ill, she'd have kicked his ass around the block a few times.

When my mother was sick with cancer, we found out my dad had been having an affair for 5 years. The woman kept calling the house the entire time as my mom lay dying. The day before she died, my sister heard my dad say on the phone to her, "Don't worry, it's almost over", so I have a lot more than just disappointment and shock over what Edwards has done. I take it personal that he is such a sleazy, lowlife, scum of a liar; a narcissistic piece of crap who could have destroyed the election by covering up lies and putting his "needs" before the country.

Is your dad still seeing that woman? I don't think that I would allow someone like her into my home. If I had been in your situation and my dad did that, he better not bring the woman around if he knew what's best for him. Truly despicable behavior.

x(

This was over 30 years ago when that all happened. After my mother became aware of the "whore", she proclaimed that my dad would not outlive her (my mother). One year almost to the day, my dad died of a cerebral hemorrhage and was buried on the day he was to marry the "whore."

Well, it confirms my belief that what goes around, comes around. Still, it's a shame that your mother had to contend with this additional pain during her last days.

Take care!!!

:o

Richard Nixon committed perhaps one of the worst crimes in the history of the Presidency, but sincerely believed that because of who he was that it didn't matter and he would be allowed to get away with it.

Now, Edwards didn't commit any crimes (yet), but the line of thinking has to be a bit similar. He did this and kept it secret--from the American people and the folks who so enthusiastically supported him--because he thought his position (where he was and what he was doing) would somehow make it not matter.

It would be ballsy if it weren't so creepy.

They start to believe their own press and fall in love with themselves. He could have done so much good had he not let his pretty boy pecker think for him.

That must have been incredibly awful dealing with the death of your mom at a time when your dad so profoundly betrayed her and your family.

What a JERK.

Never liked him.

NEVER trusted him.

Voted and PUSHED for IWR, then
claimed to have made a "mistake",
only to come out rattling the saber
for war with Iran.

Poor Elizabeth, brilliant, lovely
woman who hitched her wagon to a
LIAR.

Neither seem to possess any sense of shame. As a longtime admirer of Mrs. Edwards, I feel a great deal of sympathy for her but also see her as an enabler...

But she has suffered so much that I only feel compassion and pity for her ordeal and that of her children.

Elizabeth had upset me when she made some hypocritical remarks about Hillary, while fully knowing that her husband had been having an affair. Particularly her remarks during a magazine interview where she said that her life choices had made her happier than Hillary's. I thought at the time that her comment was very presumptuous. How can anyone assume that their life choices were better than someone else's? I also don't forget John chastising Bill for his peccadilloes. It's not human failing that is offensive, it's always the hypocrisy and the cover up that ensues.

Anything she did - covering this up or any of the attacks or lies she did for the campaign were done because I think she genuinely believed in her husband's promise. I'm not sure she knew JRE had an affair when she made those comments. Where I thought she was very wrong there was in saying HRC's choices (working as a lawyer) made her less happy than EE's choice to stay home. That bothered me as EE worked as a lawyer when her two older kids were young (and there is nothing wrong with that). In addition, for most of the two little one's lives, she was campaigning for JRE for Senate or President and involved in many other things.

I found Edwards' Senate speech one of the least effective in the Senate - and yeah I know the media has praised it highly.

But she found out about the affair shortly after John announced his candidacy, yet she kept up the farce. Remember when she said that John stood up for women's rights far more than Hillary? Well, in retrospect, that was quite ironic.

I may be wrong, but I have a sense that Elizabeth in some ways resented Hillary. They both had similar backgrounds: attorneys and politician's wives. But Hillary has accomplished so much more having been first lady, senator and a viable presidential candidate. I think that was the real reason for her snide comment in that interview.

On the second, I think you are completely on target. I think it even goes beyond that. In Saving Graces, Edwards was clearly very jealous of Teresa Kerry. But, what was more obvious was a very real insecurity - something Hillary never had. That in a retrospective book she spent pages detailing how she in what sounded like panic redecorated a room in her home because the Kerrys were likely to stay there when they had a NC event was really strange.

I wonder why she was so insecure. She's smart, talented, attractive and, at the time, thought that she had a great family. Why be catty and resentful of other women who were equally as smart? I don't get it.

...doesn't it seem like the Clintons might actually have a much happier marriage? I certainly don't claim to know all the details, but they strike me as two older and wiser people who probably don't have many secrets left from each other. Some couples can go through hell and come out the other side.

I doubt very much that Elizabeth is happier than Hillary, at any rate. I don't take joy in that. I think EE deserves happiness. But man, you should never ever brag about being happier than someone else. It's just asking for fate to bite you hard.

As you said, they've been though hell and back. I think that they have a stronger marriage now because of it.

As for Elizabeth, I doubt that between her illness and her marital situation that she's in a happy place. I hope that she finds some peace and joy for the remaining time she has left. I can't even imagine how hard it must be to be so ill and at the same time have to deal with a husband who has a mistress and a baby.

I want to say it was in the Atlantic, but I can't find it now. However, it painted her in a different light than the usual one - it implied that she was snappish, a perfectionist, demanding, and very hard to work for. Darn, I wish I could find it.

I feel sorry for her too - but I don't think she's as saintly as everyone implies. And I did not know she said those things about Hillary.

who wanted to believe in him.
Elizabeth was just one of them, although definitely the most important one. I don't see her as an enabler of the affair ... that was all JE and RH ... if anything I have more scorn for RH. She didn't have to set her cap for a married man and he, of course, didn't have to respond.
Perhaps Elizabeth enabled the cover-up to some extent. But God knows, she had a lot of other things on her mind and the last thing that a dying mother of minor children wants to do is to turn them against their father or to besmirch his reputation. He's done enough of that himself, thank you!

*******
I think that JE & RH deserve each other. They are both thoroughly selfish people.

Maybe so, since this woman is moving nearby with his child...Jesus Christ.

The full article is really devastating - not only does it ruin him professionally but it trashes him personally, as he deserves.

What an utter sleazebag.

He's receiving the equivalent of the Amish shunning. Most people don't want to have much to do with him and his political career is more than likely over.

;-)

What's sad is that just about everyone else in his life is sharing in this punishment as well, given how mortified they must be by his appalling behavior. I believe that both of his parents are still alive and his oldest daughter is an adult and they must be just dumbstruck by this. Elizabeth should just throw his sorry ass out. The more I read the more sleazy he becomes.

I hadn't thought about his parents and the other members of their respective families. Sad all around.

Kennedy funeral, where fewer spoke to him shows that.

In addition, for a man with his ego, knowing that he came very close to being VP largely based on his personality as much as his resume to now being a pariah - AND likely knowing deep down he deserved it has to be the biggest punishment anything other than losing EE and the kids. (Even as VP, he did not do many things asked because he thought they could damage his image. They wouldn't have, this of course did.)

If only Dr. Dean had taken the nomination in 2004 this man wouldn't have been a hair's breath from 2008.

I'll defend Kerry on this one, he did the best possible given the circumstances of the time.

Bush and the 2004 GOP machine would have mopped the floor with Dean.

And luckily, Edwards was never within a "hair's breath" in 2008, he was a 2nd tier candidate for most of his existence, especially after the voting started.

I think most folks saw him for what he was--all show, zero substance.

First of all, the party and the media both put intense pressure on Kerry to take Edwards. I would guess they might have pressured Dean on this too - though they might have pushed him to pick a VP with foreign policy experience. Either way, Dean in December 2003 polled almost 20 points behind Bush. The biggest issue in 2004 was foreign policy and national security. Dean would likely have lost by far more than Kerry.

So, if he were VP or if he was simply a former NC Senator, he likely would have run again.

But he took every sleazebag maneuver he could to avoid responsibility for his actions. Add those actions (which you could expect from any typical scummy politician) to the fact that he has three young children and a wife dying from cancer, and you have the picture of somebody with no heart and no shame--a shell of a man with no substance and a pretty smile. I detected that "fake, evangelist" visage in 2004, and I can only say that the news of his affair and everything that's followed has been nothing more than a validation of something I instinctively "knew" about the man but couldn't prove.

Sooner or later, they too will fall. Think of Vitter, Craig, Sanford, Edwards and so many others of their ilk. They act self righteous and have no qualms in chastising other men for their peccadilloes, but they commit the same sins or even far worse.

Hypocrites one and all!!!

:puke:

type.....and yet he fooled those who are supposed to be soooo insightful!

Many here made me the villain for the forewarning.

I'm sorry for Elizabeth and all of the children; those claimed, as well as those unclaimed. :(

Perhaps the next time folks will be more objective about my posts instead of
personally attacking me after stereotyping what I represent.

Until your Online name appears in the Urban Dictionary with a hateful negative description next to it, you may not know the personal hits that I have taken for fucking nothing but speaking my mind, backed up and well documented most of the time. Sorry that you feel that I can't say "told you so" now....when so many here do this each and every day, even when there ain't nothing to "told you so" about. :shrug:

Successful politicians have a lot in common with salespersons. That Edwards was slick was not a rational reason to oppose his candidacies--just a popular one.

He was one the biggest Iraq war cheerleader, and on the Intelligence committee; the only Democrat on that committee to vote for it.
Then conveniently when he realized the war was unpopular, and not a moment before, he said he was sorry......right before throwing his hat into the ring.

Same thing with his poverty schtick (cause that's all it was); as soon as he wasn't gonna get anywhere with it, he dismantled it....like quick. Problem is that he was still worth millions, and really could have continued making the difference.

Same thing with his hedgefund shanidigans...."learning about poverty" while making 1/2 million working parttime for the Corporate interest he supposedly so deplored.

Sorry, Edwards wasn't just slick, he was a "smile in your face" liar.

I had many reasons for opposing his candidacy, even if some didn't want to hear about them; but everyone of them had something to do with his character.

I'll just leave it at saying that I feel better for knowing that my BS meter works very well.

Two Americas was not the easy way into office. It wasn't sexy.

Edwards also dared to criticize himself when reversing his stance on the wars.

He wasn't a complete phony, but then few people are.

Yeah, ok.

He faulted intelligence.....not so much himself.

"The argument for going to war with Iraq was based on intelligence that we now know was inaccurate. The information the American people were hearing from the president -- and that I was being given by our intelligence community -- wasn't the whole story. Had I known this at the time, I never would have voted for this war."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/11/AR2005111101623_pf.html

Though I distrust his motives, I can only approve of his being willing to say, "I was wrong."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/04/AR2007020400892.html

Edwards began drawing attention to his vote in fall 2005, writing an op-ed piece in The Washington Post that began with: "I was wrong"....

"It wasn't just the weapons of mass destruction I was wrong about," Edwards said. "It's become absolutely clear -- and I'm very critical of myself for this -- become absolutely clear, looking back, that I should not have given the president this authority."

Edwards's nationally televised admission was just the start of a lengthy public dissection of the errors he said he made in casting the most important vote of his Senate tenure.

Some believe that kind of introspection has helped Edwards build a bridge to the most vocal anti-Iraq-war quarters of the Democratic Party and may help distinguish him from one of his chief rivals for the party's nomination, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.).

During yesterday's broadcast, Edwards said he believes that "anybody who wants to be president of the United States has got to be honest and open, be willing to admit when they've done things wrong."

On Hardball, he said that he had not believed there were WMD, but that there were other reasons such as weapons programs and their influence on the region that justified it. HE LIED IN HIS STATEMENT CHANGING HIS OPINION.

He has given at least 3 views of what he believed on WMD AT THE MOMENT OF THE VOTE - all of which are mutually exclusive.

I can't fault you for being right. But please don't fault those of us who weren't as 'enlightened'. We worked too hard and much of that work ultimately helped the Democratic Party.

It is what it is and we can't go back and change a fucking thing.

:pals:

That is appreciated more than you will ever know.

I wanted what Edwards promised for this country. I still do, and I hope someone will carry that message forward. Thank you!

had been more vocal and impassioned about helping the poor and made it a real campaign issue, and I THINK I liked his health care plan, too.

nominee in the previous election is about as close to a 100% complete vetting that a presidential candidate is ever going to get. It was completely reasonable to assume that if there was any major dirt on Edwards, it would have surfaced then - unfortunately, the SOB created new dirt in the interim.

:shrug:

the smugness, I mean. :hi:

considered voting for him.

I can't say I'm surprised by these "revelations." Well, somewhat surprised at the ballsy-ness of running for Prez while keeping a mistress in the van while your wife dying of cancer is along for the ride, too. Oh, and the kiddies were there.

You must be one of those people who can spot a fake a mile away. Some people can do that. I have some sense of that knack, but I didn't spot this one.

Those who've dealt with him in the past say he's an arrogant asshole. And these were Democrats saying it.

he makes me want to :puke: when I think what would've happened if he had gotten the nomination. (and unfortunately I was taken in by him, shame on me :blush: )

How on earth could you know that something like this was going on -- and as another poster mentioned, being a VP candidate previously he was probably vetted thoroughly. His message and vision for America were good - that's how we pick our candidate. You did just fine. :pals:

What does this say about my ability to be discerning? I feel taken in and it's not a good place to be. That's the hell of it...

As a former Edwards supporter, the man makes me sick. His behavior is just a remarkable thorn in my side as it is a consistent reminder that my judgment is alas not perfect...Drats... :rofl:

I got suckered hook, line and sinker.

:puke:

and he probably wants to be part of her life. All good for the child, but it must be a knife to Elizabeth's heart to have his mistress living so near her home and that of her children.

What a damn mess John made of his life!!!

:-(

... because it's OK if you're a Republican.

Sure, what Edwards did was caddish and wrong -- but we have a BIGGER problem when the press whitewashes Republican horndogs and maximizes the transgressions of Democrats in the most prurient possible manner.

There's also his children with elizabeth. Are they going to get to have a sibling relationship with their little sister? I get the feeling that Elizabeth wouldn't like it.

younger ones can be somewhat protected but she probably hears and reads all this stuff about her father. Just imagine reading that your father told his mistress they will marry as soon as your mother dies.

A also feel for the child he fathered with the mistress. She will grow up and discover how she came into the world.

As a North Carolinian I was an Edwards supporter when he was our Senator. I thought he had a great future in politics and was actually upset when he left the Senate to run for President in 2004. I felt he should have stayed in the Senate longer for more experience before making the jump. Not to mention that we ended up with Burr when he left - and then we had to endure Burr and Dole until 2008.